Christy's family may sue service

THE family of a young Ellesmere Port woman left in a coma when a doctor allegedly failed to spot she had appendicitis say they will take legal advice after a medical watchdog refused to take any action.

THE family of a young Ellesmere Port woman left in a coma when a doctor allegedly failed to spot she had appendicitis say they will take legal advice after a medical watchdog refused to take any action.

Christy Millar's family complained to the General Medical Council (GMC) after she spent six weeks unconscious and suffered kidney failure as a result of complications from a burst appendix.

The family say call handlers at Liverpool's out-of-hours service, Urgent Care 24 (UC24), told Miss Millar she had a stomach bug and to phone back in 24 hours.

When she finally saw a locum doctor at a walk-in medical centre in Old Swan, he gave her an anti-sickness injection and sent her home. Less than 48 hours later, she was fighting for her life in hospital.

Now, more than a year on, the 21-year-old geology graduate needs a kidney transplant and cannot walk much more than 10 metres inde pendently.

The GMC has decided not to take the complaint any further. In a letter, the watchdog said it was happy with an explanation from the doctor's employers that they did not have any wider concerns about him.

The GMC said the doctor was not in contravention of any guidelines and there were no 'fitness to practice' issues to address.

But Miss Millar's fiance, Steven Boyer, said the whole family were outraged.

And he called for the GMC to investigate UC24 and not simply take its word on the doctor's performance.

UC24's medical director, Simon Abrams, said: 'We carried out an investigation into the family's and Christy Millar's concerns that the doctor's performance had been inadequate.

'He assured us he'd done a proper job. Unfortunately, her condition changed in the 36 to 42 hours before she went to hospital and then she had very serious but rare complications of her appendix becoming inflamed.'

A spokeswoman for the GMC said: 'The GMC does not discuss the details of investigations, either ongoing or closed, in line with our duty of confidentiality to doctors and complainants.'